But what most examples found in the literature really do is to recommend semantically more specific words (e.g.
, replace to fly with to float or to glide), which add traits of meaning and are therefore not always interchangeable; thus the choice is not merely stylistic.
A more suitable example is to characterize an unemployed person (abstract) as out of work (concrete).
• FORCE: 0...3 Some words are more forceful, or "stronger" than others, for instance destroy vs.
annihilate, or big vs.
monstrous. There is an interesting relationship (that should be investigated more thoroughly) between these features and the notion of core vocabulary as it is known in applied linguistics.
Carter [1987] characterizes core words as having the following properties: they often have clear antonyms (big--sm...